Later on, Sakuragi realizes that he has come to actually love the sport, despite having previously played primarily because of his crush on Haruko. Sakuragi, despite his extreme immaturity and fiery temper, proves to be a natural athlete and joins the team, mainly in the hopes of impressing and getting closer to Haruko. Sakuragi is reluctant to join the team at first, as he has no prior experience in sports and thinks that basketball is a game for losers because his fiftieth rejection was in favor of a basketball player. Haruko, recognizing Sakuragi's athleticism, introduces him to the Shohoku basketball team. In his first year at Shohoku High School, he meets Haruko Akagi, the girl of his dreams, and is overjoyed when she is not repulsed or scared of him like all the other girls he has asked out. Sakuragi is very unpopular with girls, having been rejected an astonishing fifty times. Hanamichi Sakuragi is a delinquent and the leader of a gang. In 2010, Inoue received special commendations from the Japan Basketball Association for helping popularize basketball in Japan. In 1994, it received the 40th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category. Slam Dunk has 170 million copies in circulation, making it the seventh best-selling manga series in history. The manga was adapted into an anime television series by Toei Animation which aired from October 1993 to March 1996 and has been broadcast worldwide, enjoying much popularity particularly in Japan, several other Asian countries and Europe. It was serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from October 1990 to June 1996, with the chapters collected into 31 tankōbon volumes. It tells the story of a basketball team from Shōhoku High School in the Shōnan area of Japan. Slam Dunk (stylized as SLAM DUNK) is a Japanese sports manga series written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue.

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